The Castle Builder

Dates and Times

Ticket information

£12 / 10 (conc)

Part of All The Right Notes, a three-week festival exploring what happens when gigs and theatre collide. See two shows in one night for just £16 with our double bill offer – simply add two shows into your basket and we’ll do the rest! Browse the rest of the programme here.

Presented by Vic Llewellyn & Kid Carpet

Asking questions about art, who it’s for and what mark it leaves on the world, this playful and uplifting show intertwines personal anecdotes from Vic Llewellyn, Kid Carpet’s unique brand of punky electronic music, and tales of people from around the world who have created extraordinary art just for the pleasure of it. Using as its starting point a castle on a remote headland just outside the village of Ramsvika in Norway, which was built by over the period of five years unbeknownst to anyone, The Castle Builder explores outsider artists and the joy of creating. Each performance will feature a different maker, who at the end of the show will present the audience with something they build or create using the debris from the show and anything else they find scattered around the stage.

The Castle Builder celebrates visionaries who were laughed at and remembered by few or went unnoticed, and all artists to whom ‘impossible’ is just a word.

“And it holds its audience, tenderly, in the palm of its hand, lifts us to the stars, then places us gently back down on earth, with a reminder that there’s always time to live better. Its beautiful” Exeunt

“In its mesh of facts and musings about non-gallery art; its marvellous melee of found objects, treasured possessions, and ready-made art; its joyful, messy and exuberant performance mode”Total Theare Magazine

Directed by Richie Smith & Emma Williams.

About the company

Kid Carpet (Ed Patrick) began making music with old keyboards, toys, computers, and a sellotaped up broken electric guitar, and has just released his eighth album. He’s supported acts such as Art Brut, Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Electric 6, Willy Mason, Arcade Fire, The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players and Presidents Of the United States of America. He’s made several shows for children including Kid Carpet & The Noisey Animals (2012) Blast Off! (2013) and Kid Carpet and the Noisy Neighbours.

Vic Llewellyn is an Ecole Phillippe Gaulier trained actor whose credits include Tim Crouch’s The Author at the Royal Court and Traverse, and Improbable’s Phillip Glass opera Satyagraha, for which he was part of the original devising team and performed the show in New York and the ENO. He was a member of Desperate Men Theatre Company making street shows The Lighthouse, The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, Rick, Dick & Vic Extreme…, and The Miracle Show. He also was part of the team that made and toured dotComedy’s large outdoor maze, GET LOST!